Chickenhawk is a political epithet used in the United States criticize somebody who strongly supports a war or other military action (i.e., a War Hawk), yet who actively avoided military service when of age. The term is meant to indicate that the person in question is cowardly or hypocritical for personally avoiding combat in the past while advocating that others go to war in the present. Generally, the implication is that "chickenhawks" lack the experience, judgment, or moral standing to make decisions about going to war. The term is not applied to those who avoided military service without subsequently adopting a hawkish political outlook.

Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney: King of the Chickenhawks

Ted Nugent: He claims that 30 days before his Draft Board Physical, he stopped all forms of personal hygiene. The last 10 days he ingested nothing but junk food and Pepsi, and a week before his physical, he stopped using the bathroom altogether, virtually living inside his pants caked with excrement and urine. That spectacle won Nugent a deferment.

Mitt Romney: He claimed that he was a minister of religion to get out of Vietnam. He went to be a missionary in France.

George W. Bush: He was flying planes in the middle of the country not in Vietnam, which he brags about, which is sad and pathetic.

Rush Limbaugh: Had a Pilonidal cyst on his ass which is true, and he used that to get out of Vietnam and said that he couldn't sit on it, and now he sits on his ass for a living.

Dick Cheney: This guy had five deferments. He said that "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service." Really? People were killed in war and this guy had other priorities?

Newt Gingrich: Choosing to obtain deferments granted to college students and fathers, Gingrich did not enlist in the military, and was not drafted during the Vietnam War. He expressed some regret about that decision in 1985, saying, "Given everything I believe in, a large part of me thinks I should have gone over." He stayed in college longer to get out of Vietnam.

Tom Delay: Said that he couldn't go to Vietnam because the minorities took his spot? Really?

Henry Kissinger: Kissinger's take on our brave men and women in uniform? "Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." -- Henry Kissinger, as quoted in "The Final Days" by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in chapter 14. Page 194 in the paperback version (1995). Kissinger has never denied saying it.

Chickenhawk Bios by Cesar Perez, member of The Christian Left

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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